Unfortunately just grabbing the Windows binaries off the squid website and following their instructions won't work for everyone, but it only takes a small number of simple configuration changes to get it going. If you take the easy path and grab my modified install of squid (with those changes applied), it's a piece of cake.

So what is squid or a caching proxy in general? The squid website says:

"Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages."

So why would you want to use it? From my experience, if you are in any of the following situations:

• You want your browsing to be snappy in general (helps on cable/ADSL too!)


• You are shaped and want better performance when browsing your frequently-visited sites


• You are about to get shaped and want to reduce your quota consumption


• You are on a flaky, high-latency or slow connection (e.g. laptop Wi-Fi, wireless broadband, dial-up)

While it is true that your web-browser most definitely has an internal cache, you'll likely get a noticeable improvement in perceived latency due to squid's DNS caching. On top of that, I find squid picks up 25% of traffic that my install of Firefox doesn't cache, misses or expires.

:: Downloading squid for Windows ::

You have two choices:

1. Download my config-prepared version of squid 2.7: Link (2MB)
2. or grab the latest "Standard" Stable binary from: Link

What's the difference? If you pick the second choice, you'll need to do some minor config editing which I've already done for you in my version.

:: Unpacking squid ::

Whichever file you downloaded, the zip file should have the "squid" folder already embedded so unpack it to C:\ so that all of the files appear under c:\squid (and not c:\squid\squid). If you unpack the files elsewhere, the rest of my instructions won't work as I've written them (the Windows binaries have the paths hardcoded by default).

If you've grabbed my version of squid, you don't have any editing to do and should skip to the next section ("Preparing squid"). If you grabbed the official version, you'll need to do the following:

1. Navigate to c:\squid\etc in Explorer.
2. Rename all of the whatever.conf.default files to whatever.conf (i.e. remove the .default suffix).
3. Edit c:\squid\etc\squid.conf in a text-editor.
4. Search for TAG: visible_hostname
5. There should be a block of comments starting with # . After the comments, add the line: visible_hostname localhost



6. Now search for http_access allow manager localhost
7. Don't modify the line, but below it add the line: http_access allow localhost



That's it.

:: Preparing squid ::

Now we need to make squid's swap directories, which will contain all the cache data:

1. Open up Command Prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd.exe)
2. Navigate to c:\squid\sbin ( execute: cd /d c:\squid\sbin )
3. Run: squid -z

It should now create swap directories like so:



If it fails with "Abnormal Termination" or similar, then something went wrong. Don't proceed any further if this is so. Step through the tutorial again or grab my version of squid if you didn't.

:: Configuring browser ::

If you have Firefox, find your way to the Network Connection Settings menu and add IP 127.0.0.1 with port 3128 as a proxy like so:



For Internet Explorer, you can do the same via the LAN Settings in Internet Options like so:



(You can undo these steps at any time if you get rid of squid in future or if it's causing problems)

Now try to view a website. It should fail.

That's good, it just means there's nothing already running on squid's port, which is what we want. We can now get the proxy up and running in the next section.

:: Testing squid ::

With the prompt still open, run: squid -X

The -X switch just tells squid to stay attached to the prompt and show heaps of output. You should see a whole heap of text, and then squid will look like it's paused like this:



With the prompt still open with squid running, try to browse in Firefox or Internet Explorer. It should work this time round. Great!

Now hold CTRL and then C to terminate the squid session.

:: Finalising squid ::

Now we wrap it up so that squid is launched automatically when Windows starts.

Again with the prompt still open, run: squid -i -n squid -O "-D"

It should now output success:



You can now reboot to get squid to run in the background, or alternatively launch the service manually just this once: net start squid



The tutorial is now complete. You can now enjoy the benefits of a local web proxy cache and snappy browsing!

:: Serving a LAN ::

The tutorial was written to show how one would run and use squid locally. This is because the typical desktop machine isn't necessarily on 24/7 to allow other machines to have proxy access. If your situation differs and you wish to allow other machines to connect, it's fairly simple to achieve.

1. Open up c:\squid\etc\squid.conf in a text-editor.
2. Search for: 10.0.0.0/8

You'll see several 'allow' rules for different networks/subnets:



If one of these IP ranges corresponds to your LAN then you don't need to alter the configuration file. Otherwise, simply add a new rule for your network (or modify the existing ones). The "192.168.0.0/16" template would be the best to build from for most purposes. Once you've made the configuration change, restart the squid server (either reboot or perform: net stop squid followed by net start squid).

Now just restep through the "Configuring Browser" step earlier in the tutorial for the other machines, but put the LAN IP of the squid server in. Ready to work!

:: Uninstalling/Reverting ::

If you need to remove squid for whatever reason (don't need it, it doesn't work), you should:

1. Remove the proxy settings you entered in your browser so that you can browse normally
2. Stop the squid service if it's running: net stop squid
3. Disable the squid service permanently: c:\squid\sbin\squid -r -n squid
4. Delete the squid folder